I am quite sure that all of you might be able to recall Indian films that show a strong influence of one or many Western films. In fact, the influence is sometimes blatantly obvious such that you can point out scenes from English movies which have been reconstructed to form the Indian version. Now, I don’t want to go into examples here because 1. there are far too many and 2. because mentioning any one would amount to letting the others off the hook and would amount to bias. But I am quite sure that you are able to recall films which have reminded you of various cult English flicks. Sometimes it might be the basic plot, sometimes it might be just the fights, or it might be the way in which certain scenes are constructed – but the influence will be undeniable.

In fact, there are many instances where Tamil cinema has laughed at itself for being over dependent on English cinema for ideas – remember the scene in Ayan when Karunas gets DVDs of various English films for a director.

Yes, Tamil cinema has bowed and bent to the influence of Tamil cinema. It would be dishonest to say that we have not enjoyed the results. There have been many products which have been thoroughly entertaining in spite of bearing obvious similarities to hugely popular English movies. But, if you remember, I had said right at the start that I do not believe in the hypothesis that Indian cinema lacks originality or content. Yes, I believe that we have the right kind of material to produce far better cinema, if only we believe in the richness of our culture, traditions and literature.

If I say that Indian cinema has had as many films inspired from Shakespeare’s classics as from the Ramayana or Mahabharatha, it would be hard to deny. And if I say that gems of Tamil literature like Silappathikaram have never even been explored, that too cannot be denied. Even the Ramayana or Mahabharatha, which have been represented and interpreted many times on the big and small screen have not yet been fully covered. Only the central plot of the Ramayana has been focused upon all these years. But, the great epic contains so many subplots which are extremely interesting tales by themselves, that are yet to be unearthed and treated as material for cinema. Similarly, India has a great collection of ‘Puranas’ which have enough material to rule out any dearth of content for centuries. I am not saying that we should be making cinema straight out of the epics or puranas, but they can be altered and interpreted to suit our times and sensibilities, instead of importing content from the West.

Similar things can be said about our history as well. Indian cinema has focused only a microcosm of Indian history. There seem to be some favorite topics like Akbar, the freedom struggle and related matters. But, the vastly rich portions of our history remain ignored till today. The West has shown the world about the exploits and greatness of King Arthur, Alexander the Great, Achilles and the Spartans. On the other hand, Indian cinema stopped with Akbar, Kattabomman, Pazhassi Raja and a few others. Legends like Tippu Sultan, Jhansi Rani, King Porus (the Indian king who verged one of the fiercest battles against the huge forces of Alexander) and Karikala Chozhan (the king who defeated the Greek army that was four times bigger than his) remain hugely underrepresented or even ignored by Indian cinema. A lot of you would have heard of the movie called Teen Patti and the way it reminds one of an English film called ‘The Beautiful Mind’ at many points. ‘The Beautiful Mind’ was based on the life of the Nobel Laureate mathematician John Forbes Nash. While Indian cinema did not miss the opportunity to be influenced by this film, we should be perturbed by the fact that the life of an equally great (even greater) Indian mathematician remains unknown to the world through our cinema, Srinivas Ramanujam.

Even when it comes to literature, there seems to be a devaluing of our own creations. Sujatha’s ‘Disai Kandein Vaan Kandein’ is in no way inferior to Avatar in terms of concept or imagination. But, while Avatar has become a global phenomenon, Disai Kadein Vaan Kandein’ remains on paperback. It is not that Tamil literature has been totally ignored. But, one gets the feeling that Indian cinema is almost under-confident or apologetic while making such products.

The content and originality are within us, we only have to look within and believe in what we see and be confident to tell the world what we are. Let us give ourselves a chance. Let us not be like the musk deer, searching for fragrance all its life not knowing that it emanates from within.

(By Sudhakar, with inputs from Arun.)

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